Click below to
find interesting
information from our
September 2011
newsletter
relating to:
Roaming
Travel
Mobile phones
Roaming
Record
roaming
bill
We think the
"roaming bill
record" has just
been broken - by
a mobile phone
manufacturer.
Allen
Wong (right), a
corporate
affairs
specialist at
the Canadian
division of
Samsung
Electronics
incurred a
$100,000 bill
for data-roaming
during a
European trip
when he used a
smartphone
tethered to a
laptop. The
usage was
entirely
legitimate and
at 2GB perhaps
not especially
high.
Ironically
Wong's job
includes
overseeing
wireless
spending.
We calculate
Samsung would
have saved
around $90,000
by using vRoam's
vSIM
in Europe
instead of his
normal SIM. And
sensible
precautions
would have saved
even more of the
rest of the
bill.
Save more of
your bill,
use our vSIM
post-paid
alternative
for cheaper
roaming.
Travel
Travellers
cheques
die out
In
the
middle
of last
century,
as air
travel
became
common,
American
Express
popularised
the
travellers
cheque
as a
means of
getting
funds
conveniently,
especially
in
foreign
countries.
Travellers
cheques became
common amongst
jetsetters, but
today are dying
as a product.
Killed by ATMs
(which seem to
be available
everywhere you
might otherwise
cash a
travellers
cheque), their
usage has halved
since their peak
in 1994. The
graph on the
right shows
outstanding
(uncashed) US$
cheques tracked
by the Federal
reserve, showing
just how steep
the decline has
been, in a
period when
travel has
otherwise
boomed.
It seems the
end is near;
already we have
seen hotels
refusing to cash
them or accept
them for
settlement of
bills.
It seems,
unlike American
Express' famous
advertisement,
that we can (and
do) leave home
without them.
Mobile phones
GPS to go dark?
GPS coverage of
America could
soon go dark in
places and
become patchy
elsewhere. There
are over 500m
GPS receivers in
use throughout
the United
States - in
cars, mobile
phones, boats,
with television
broadcasters,
the police, the
armed forces,
the emergency
services and
farmers. The
“NextGen”
air-traffic
control system,
which is to be
rolled out in
2012, replaces
today’s
ground-based
radars with GPS
satellite
signals to allow
planes to fly
tighter to save
fuel, time and
lives. GPS has
become
essential.
The
ultimate source
of the trouble
is a broadband
satellite
operator called
LightSquared,
whose chunk of
spectrum
(1,525-1,559
megahertz) is
alongside a
crucial
frequency (1,575
megahertz) used
by GPS
satellites.
Normally this
would be
irrelevant for a
satellite
signal, except
that an FCC (the
US regulator)
waiver for
ground-based
transmitters
where satellite
reception was
poor lets the
network rely
almost
exclusively on
land-based
transmitters.
LightSquared
plans to build a
4G LTE wireless
network of
40,000
base-stations
across the
United States
putting out
15,000 watts
each (typical
base-stations
emit around ten
watts).
Experts issued a
1,000-page
report showing
that the plan
would cause
massive
interference and
that GPS
operations would
be unavailable
all over the
east coast of
America. Tests
carried out at
Las Vegas ran
into jamming
problems ranging
from erratic
behaviour to
complete loss of
signal, because
the transmitters
were up to 800
billion times
more powerful
than the faint
incoming GPS
transmissions.
No filtering
circuit yet
devised can
block such
interference
without
massively
degrading the
GPS signal,
being so weak to
start with.
America urgently
needs another
national
broadband
carrier—more so
now AT&T’s $39
billion
acquisition of
T-Mobile might
reduce the
competition to a
duopoly (Verizon
and AT&T,
controlling over
80% of the
market), but not
at the expense
of crippling
GPS.
The FCC has got
America—and the
rest of the
world—into a
real mess.
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